I dunno about you guys, but I had a pretty fantastic holiday break. I opened presents, hung out with family, held babies and watched a copious amount of Mystery Science Theater with my younger brother. Well, 2015 is happening. Time to get back to school and start hating myself again. That’s how that works, right? Oh, you want me to talk about the video games I played over said break? You don’t? Oh, well too bad. I’m going to tell you about them anyways.

Here are some things I played that don’t deserve their own multi-paragraph thing

I finished all the post-game content for “2014’s 2013 Game of the Year” Etrian Odyssey IV. If the part where I was willing to do the stuff that you could do after the credits rolled is any indication, I like that game a lot. You’ve heard my spiel about how if it isn’t the best game in the series (I think it is, at least thus far) it’s the best place to jump in for normal people, so I won’t repeat it. If EO III was the game that made me a fan of the series (despite the part where it’s sadistically brutal at times!), IV has cemented my loyalty and I will probably buy that Etrian Odyssey II remake the second it comes to the states despite the part where I still need to get through that remake of the first Etrian Odyssey. And Persona Q. And while we’re talking about similar games, Shin Megami Tensei IV.

In terms of games I played with friends and such, the Jackbox Party Pack was one of them! Like a lot of dumb party style party games, it’s not so much a contest of skill as it is a way to manufacture laughter from a decently sized group of people who don’t need to be proficient in anything but lying. The part where you can play it with smart phones and the part where it’s on PS3 means I will likely pick it up for my own party hijinks at some point… right after I earn the capital necessary to purchase Puyo Puyo Tetris because holy crap I need to own that game. Other than that and the requisite spread of fighting games I play with one friend whenever we’re in town together, the Hoard game that was free on PSN a couple of months ago is a surprisingly great Age of Booty-esque strategy type game for 4 players on one console, so if you downloaded it, thinking nothing of it before, I suggest giving it another looksie with friends. There was also a requisite amount of Smash Bros (that game is great), a dash of Bayonetta 2, me watching my buddy play Far Cry 4 and just a hint of Divinity Original Sin co-op.

But of course, I was on break for something like two weeks. So after we had exhausted all the fun stuff, we moved onto the “fun” stuff. Boy guys, Playstation All-Stars sure is a shitty Smash Bros ripoff that fails to understand what makes Smash Bros good, am I right? So of course we played a lot of it. It’s not the part where the roster is sorta bad, or the part where only supers count for kills, or the cheap looking menus or the seeming desire to mix the concept of “chaotic party thing” with “serious fighting game” (not very well, I might add), it’s the all of those together put into soulless package dictated by the marketing department. If we were going to play terrible party games, we should’ve just played a game of Dokapon Kingdom, because that game is both terrible and amazing and we had like 2 weeks to do it. Don’t worry though, we played some Mario Party afterwards to wash the taste out of our mouths.

Final Fantasy Thirteen Two.

If I had to use one word to describe Final Fantasy XIII-2 it would be reactionary. If Final Fantasy XIII was a game that obliviously did its own thing, seemingly to its own detriment, then its direct sequel is a game seemingly aimed at addressing all the complaints leveled at its predecessor…. while also sorta being a sequel to Final Fantasy XIII. I’m not entirely sure what Lightning Returns is yet, but I can assure you that it is its own brand of crazy and not unlike Majora’s Mask.

What do I mean by it “sorta” being a sequel? I’m going to be honest, FF XIII wrapped itself up pretty well and given the direction the story of this game takes you could’ve set it in an entirely different world and used entirely different characters and the plot would have more or less remained intact. In fact, aside from Hope it’s not even like the principal cast of FF XIII shows up for longer than “cameo” status (whatever man, Serah was in that game for like 5 minutes). I’m not going to bag on Square too much about this, it’s just weird to me that the direct sequel to Final Fantasy XIII doesn’t actually have a ton of connection to the underlying plot of Final Fantasy XIII. I get it. Asset generation is expensive. People (not necessarily me but maybe not not necessarily me) didn’t much care for the story and characters of FF XIII. You can have your cake and eat it too, I guess.

But to get into the story itself, I don’t think I’ve seen a more flagrant abuse of “Because Time Travel” as a plot device in quite some time. Don’t take that as an insult; the lack of internal time travel logic contributes to what is a delightfully bonkers tale about Laura Bailey and Sora from Kingdom Hearts solving paradoxes and defending the past (and future) “Because Time Travel”. I think FF XIII’s ensemble worked through sheer force of attrition, but I don’t think Serah and Noel are quite as compelling leads by comparison. At least Caius is an alright villain even if his plan falls apart if you think too hard about it and hot young man bishonen Hope isn’t a whiny brat. The time travel conceit also allows for some excellent fake-out paradox endings, the best of which involves Snow showing up and proving that Troy Baker will always be the hero in everything. I’ve included it below for your pleasure.

As for the way it plays, Final Fantasy XIII-2 has the same surprisingly compelling macromanagement-focused combat system that made me sorta like the last one. Only without 20 hours of stuff before having access to all the gameplay systems. It also has pokemon-esque creature capturing mechanics, is decidedly far less linear (the wide open areas occasionally causing problems with the frame rate) and is also way easier to cheese. Say what you will about the linearity of Final Fantasy XIII, the upside to that was that your party was usually appropriately leveled for most of the encounters in that game. This game? Well, let’s just say that most non-boss encounters were solved through the deft use of COM/RAV/RAV and pressing the A button over and over. Don’t get me wrong, some boss encounters were challenging and part of that success came from me already knowing what to do from 40 hours of the last game, but aside from the final boss I don’t think any one encounter was particularly tough. Similarly, the monster stuff is neat but didn’t really demand much from me through my management of that. Maybe if I did more of the post-game stuff, maybe a couple of those DLC bosses I’d change my tune, but after the 22ish hours that I spent on the game I was good for the time being.

Still, in general I’d say I liked XIII-2 a lot more than the first game. Maybe not enough for me to recommend it without caveats, but hey, I’d still recommend it. It’s proof if nothing else that Square can learn from their mistakes and then go on to make new, different mistakes. Like perhaps this game where I can play dress up with Lightning and give her sexy librarian glasses on all of her outfits because of course I would do that. You can expect my thoughts on that soon enough, but for now I’m distracted by what should’ve been everyone’s 2014 Game of the Year: Bound by Flame. Sure, I’m long overdue to play more Dragon Age, but what’s the fun in that?

A few of my thoughts:

• You are absolutely correct: all three FFXIII games are oddly detached from one another. While the events of XIII-2 do directly lead into Lightning Returns, it's still a very different time period and set of characters yet again. I enjoyed this, as it gives each game its own feel that keeps things from getting stale
• Most encounters in XIII-2 are stupid easy. There are one or two fights in the post-game that get a bit rougher, but the DLC fights are where most of the challenge comes from--most of them have around 10 million HP. Maxing out your characters, getting the best weapons, and having useful creatures is mandatory for most of these encounters.
• Lightning Returns is definitely its own bag of crazy. It's ridiculous how many things the development team threw at the wall in that game; it's even crazier how many of them manage to stick. By all means, it shouldn't have worked--but it did and quite well.
• Not sure you'll care for the story in LR, based on your opinions of XIII-2 and its characters. Hope, in particular, is an annoying pain in the ass in LR, even more so than usual. It does tie back in (mostly thematically) to the events of the original game, though, if that piques your interest at all.

Any break involving MST3K is a good 'un. And right off the bat, you named a bajillionty 3DS games I own and need to beat. I think I will return to Etrian IV after I'm finished with Fantasy Life. By the way, that game's pretty great.

Enjoyed the article - currently on a backlog (pile of shame) kick. Once I finish ff10 I think I'll give ff 13-2 a try. I actually quite enjoyed ff13 - it introduced a newcomer like me to the series in an easy to grasp way - probably to its detriment for series veterans. It was great for me.

I definitely found 13-2 to be the high point of the series. That studio has a special talent for convoluted nonsense which was wasted on the first game's melodrama. Convoluted Nonsense and Time Travel are best friends though, and that combo allowed for some special shenanigans. Like you I'll happily take "Because Time Travel" as an excuse for awesome stuff to happen. That boss with infinite forms was cool even though I had no idea what was going on.

The combat was kind of a bummer though, it made me realize there wasn't as much potential in the system as 13 made me believe. I was happy to trade the challenge of combat away for more freedom, but I still feel like there's a system out there that could've allowed for both. I'd be happy to play another game with the combat from 10 or 10-2.

The sequel thing is really the only part of 13-2 that grates on my nerves. I love that they addressed everything that people hated about 13, but I cannot understand why they chose to do it in a direct sequel. Who would play a direct sequel to a game they hated? Not very many people, based on their sales figures. That left Square in the standard Square position of having no idea what people want, because from their perspective they gave people what they asked for and it didn't work. So they made Lightning Returns (released in some regions under the title Final Fantasy: Fuck It), a game which simultaneously wants to return to the first game, tie together the loose threads of the second game, and reinvent itself so it's nothing like the other 2. All I can say is that MGS4 was not the most nonsensical game I played last year. I look forward to your thoughts on that one, currently I'd say you're 2 for 2 on correct Final Fantasy 13 opinions.

I remember liking 13-2 a lot up until the point you get to that fucking dungeon near the end, where you need to puzzle out the path with rotating blocks. I was fully expecting the Noel flashback to be it, since it set up the finale very well, and then they throw in a bullshit Back to Bed clone where you also have to evade or fight fairly pointless encounters. It was one of the most egregious examples of senseless padding I have ever seen in a video game. Fuck that shit.

XIII-2 is the shit layer in the shit sandwich that is the FFXIII trilogy. Only in this case, the bread is also made of shit.

You're certainly right about Caius' motivations not making sense if you think about it too hard, just minus the "too hard" part. His "plan" boils down to wiping out all of reality in order to save some reincarnating girl from dying - after her last incarnation has died (unless either him or Noel are going to change sex, and then get freaky and reincarnate her again.) Seriously. The entire human race is extinct except for him and Noel, and he wants to wipe out the universe because?!? He is the least sympathetic, supposed-to-be-sympathetic villain ever written. And an overly melodramatic, utter moron.

If I had to use one word to describe Final Fantasy XIII-2 it would be reactionary.

Hey, great minds.

I think what primarily upset me about XIII-2 is how halfhearted so many of the new additions felt. There's dialogue choices in conversations, but they suck and don't feel like they belong there. There's quick time events.. for some reason. The monster collection system is neat but you don't really have to spend much time with it because nothing about the game demands it. There are for-realsies sidequests, but nearly all of them are thoughtless fetch quests. There's minigames now, but I remember being offended when the attendants told me the rest of them would be coming in DLC.

I think the monster collection stuff is what really bothers me the most though; you're Square Enix, and introducing this huge new thing that you're integrating into the battle system by putting the bare minimum of effort into it. You're just re-using models and animations and slapping the existing paradigm system onto them because that's the easiest thing you can do to make it look like you did something new. It's lame. There's a grand idea there that could, if properly iterated and worked on, make an entire Final Fantasy game unto itself, and it's like they just didn't even bother. That I enjoyed XIII-2 more than I disliked it almost feels like it was an accident.

I really love time travel, though, so I remember a few set pieces and plot threads sticking out to me as super cool. Like, when you go to Academia in the future and find out the city basically runs on a re-constructed fal'cie and it takes over the whole city? And that boss you can't actually beat because it keeps replacing itself from other points in time? Cool occasional set pieces and plot threads, but it's clear the game is a sequel that wasn't ever supposed to exist.

Also adult Hope is kinda cute. I have a weird thing for his lisp.

I was spending a ton of time with XIII-2 when I initially played it. I really wanted to get the rare monsters, level them up, etc. Some of the more crazy ones escape me but I know I went out of my way to build a good set of monsters. And then all of a sudden I couldn't stand that game and rushed to the end. I won't play Lightning Returns.

I can't hate on the XIII series like most people, I loved the first one (I farmed Adamantoises for hours and hours), but the lack of cohesion between XIII and XIII-2 just really turned me off.

I can barely recall a thing about FFXIII-2, other than the music was all right, and I only say that because I've been playing a lot of Theatrhythm Curtain Call of late. Noel is so Sora it's kind of ridiculous, right down to his his baggy shorts, tussled coif and inexplicable chirpiness given the discombobulation of passing through so many universes and also being the last survivor of his homeland. Not that a male version of Lightning would've necessarily been better. We've been there before.

I know how much you like X-2, so you liking XIII-2 doesn't surprise me. There's a distinct feeling that they're doing something weirdly meta and parodic with material they would normally treat as sacrosanct. They missed a trick not giving that moogle a Brooklyn accent though.

Also.

Caius is like the best voiced ff character ever. Strangely really compelling character and i loved that ending.

on the other hand, serah sucks.

@sinusoidal: Heh, I forgot, were you the one who got into a lengthy argument with Hailinel about the merits of this trilogy? I didn't let the obvious plot hole bother me too much, because at that point I was already fully suspending all sorts of disbelief in regards to how Time Travel actually worked in that game. If I'm going to play a JRPG I expect all sorts of melodramatic crazy, so Caius filled that bill quite nicely.

@mento: I did like the music quite a bit. It does some neat things with synth and orchestra that I was a fan of and that metal Chocobo theme is really, really really dumb in a way I can get behind.

@hunter5024: I wouldn't mind a little more player input into the combat, but maybe at that point I'm just asking for FF XII's gambit system. Hmmm, maybe I should get back to that at some point. Anyways,after a handful of hours I already have a decent impression that the story of Lightning Returns is heading into anime crazy town, so I'm... quite interested in seeing where it goes.

@ghostiet:Yep! That final platforming sequence sure is something!

@sparky_buzzsaw: I can confirm that Fantasy Life is pretty dope. It's one of those games that seems complete anathema to the way that reviewers play stuff, but I think it's charming and I'm lumberjacking shit as fake Rei Ayanami and then carpentering sweet new axes so I can lumberjack more, etc. Fun stuff. Admittedly, the current slate of stuff I've been playing has distracted me from it, but I figure I'll get around to it eventually. That and Omega Ruby.

Great minds indeed. Totally didn't see that review of yours. I found the dialogue choices and QTEs sort of quaint, as if the developers saw "Hey, these western games have dialogue choices and Quick Time Events, so we should put those in the game!" without really understanding why. It's sorta like a lot of the decisions that I imagine led to the creation of Resident Evil 6, only far less disastrous.

I'll admit also that I didn't figure out the pun behind Caius's name, and how he relates to a certain other all-encompassing time-travelling Final Fantasy villain, until several months after beating the game. Well, all right, it was a couple weeks ago.

I might surmise that it'll come up in Lightning Returns, when I get around to it some time this week (just so you don't have to suffer alone in the expanded universe of FFXIII).

Yeah, that was me. Calling it an "argument" is being nice though. It mostly consisted of @hailinel calling everything I said insane and misguided. Where is he? I miss him.

I should have loved 13-2 based on the quick bullet points describing the game. But how you solved paradoxes was weird and arbitrary, and the pokemon stuff felt weird and arbitrary in a similar way. So there's all these weirdly executed ideas I shoulda been into more than I was. My main issue was you werent going through time fixing time problems, a weird random thing was happening in a time and you had to do some seemingly unrelated weird thing to undo the first thing. A bunch of nonsense. And Caius is like a joke from top to bottom. And since they were throwing ideas into a stewpot it seemed weird to me they didn't do a FF6/Suikoden 3 style thing where you could shift between perspectives and play through whatever Lightning was doing in conjunction with Serah. I liked the weird early endings. They should have leaned more into the crazy stuff like that.

I have to keep telling myself that I shouldn't fall into the XIII saga hole. Yet there's something intriguing about it. I guess it's articles like these that find something praiseworthy about it and other people who seem to love it (Hailinel if IIRC).

I just gotta keep reminding myself how dumb the story seems in every single one of those games. That'll keep me away...it must.....gaaaah I wanna play it. No I don't. YES I DO. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Pardon the interruption.

Man, I absolutely loved Caius and thought he was a great villain. I also didn't find his motivation flawed/stupid, really.

13-2/LR spoilers: I also really love that he was /is one of the only villains/antagonists that I can think of that truly wins and doesn't get defeated, not even Lightning can defeat him in LR/13-3!

I will say that 13-2 is the one I like the least, and I consider 13-2 and LR to be spin offs of FF13, which I absolutely love and it's probably my favorite FF that I've played.

@aegon: As someone who still sorta liked Final Fantasy XIII, I would highly suggest that you don't play Final Fantasy XIII. I mean, yes, you have your Kingdom Hearts avatar again so you are clearly down for some JRPG melodrama, but there are better temporal black holes to throw away 40 hours into.

@grantheaslip: The production values of XIII really are something else (it's very pretty) but then you have to remember that those production values are also the product of a game that was in development for something like 5-6 years and cost way too much to make.

The soundtrack of XIII-2 is actually pretty awesome when you lay out individual songs like that (I'm also a fan of its rendition of victory fanfare).

@sinusoidal: Hailinel isn't on these forums any more, sadly. From the first few hours of Lightning Returns that I've played, somehow I doubt I'll be able to champion that game with the zeal that guy did (i.e. I don't think Lightning Returns is super great thus far)

Stick through until the ending anyway. It's amazingly awful. Seriously, the most terrible thing I've ever seen.

Abysmal plot aside, I think the combat in LR is the best in the series. The optional bosses are a real challenge and a whole lot of fun to take down. I spent hours figuring out a strategy for some dragon fucker in the desert. It felt so good finally smashing his face in by the skin of my teeth after dying a good dozen times. I didn't think much of the extra content in the first or second FFXIII.

I'll just come in here and say that I really really enjoyed XIII-2. I think Caius is the best antagonist in series history.

Similarly I enjoyed Lighting Returns more than anything else in 2014 as it was my 2014 GOTY.

I feel pretty stupid, but I don't know which villain it is a reference to

Wait is it Garland? from the very first game? I'm not seeing the pun exactly if so.

Nice blog @arbitrarywater, I agree with a lot of your criticisms I disagree about Serah though I thought Laura Bailey did an exceptional voice acting her in way that made her feel compelling despite what was otherwise a pretty bland script.

@slag: Yep, Garland. Or rather, his alter-ego Chaos. Chaos has some messed up chronological lore in the Dissidia games too, so the only constant with him is that he tends to fly thousands of years through time to cause mischief.

I think it was probably more of an homage than any actual attempt to link FFXIII's world with FFI's.